The List of Weekend Cooking Chores is LONG this week.

...but the pile of delicious, frugal, and healthy food to eat is HUGE!  Boy what a long weekend it has been for cooking.  One disadvantage of full time working is 8 fewer hours mid-week to do chores.  So then it moves to nights and weekends.  I have a memory of doing a lot of prep in the evenings after Nick went to bed.  Well my friends, I am there again.

This week from the CSA we got 5 lbs of tomatoes.  Yummy.  But that's a lot of tomatoes.  So what do you do?  You make marinara.  Do you have to peel the tomatoes?  According to just about everyone on the internet: yes.

So here's  how the weekend has panned out.

Friday night: Blanch, peel, de-seed 4.5 lbs tomatoes.
Saturday breakfast: Make eggs to go with the pancakes and bacon that we made for the family and my son's friend (sleepover)
Saturday morning: Make 2 lbs of meatballs.
Saturday lunch time: Wash lettuce
Saturday afternoon: make marinara and cook pasta
Dinnertime!  Assemble salad (basically lettuce and dressing.  At this point, I was tired.)

Saturday evening: Put crockpot refried bean ingredients in crockpot
Sunday morning: Drain, mash, turn into 9 bean burritos for the freezer
Sunday lunch time (after coming back from the 3.7 mile walk to and from the Greek festival): Make Arabic lentils and rice, and caramelized onions.

Still yet to come: Make Greek salad with purslane (something new from the CSA), and roast carrots.  Dinner is the lentils and rice and onions and carrots and salad.  Everything microwaved, except the salad.  When you are cooking in 15 min spurts, you just end up reheating everything.

 

Week 2, 3.2

Another 3.2 lbs, down 6.4.  Hey, I'm now down to where I was last September.  Ugh.  Oh well.

Trying to get a stubborn baby to go to sleep. Unsuccessfully.

On long term success

I've been thinking a lot lately about long term success. Mostly, I've been thinking about weight loss, but I think it applies to any long term goal...work, parenting, etc.

I am a member of the National Weight Control Registry.  Sometimes, I feel like a bit of a fraud. I recently filled out my annual questionnaire and I'm not particularly happy about my current weight. Especially when I admitted that I hadn't given birth in the last 12 months. I took them literally because I got the survey 12 months and 11 days after the baby was born. What upsets me the most is that i was almost 20 lbs lighter last October and I backslid. It's one thing to stall, backsliding is something else.

My good friend the dietitian told me today that she knows I've made permanent changes and the baby weight is only temporary. How does she know? And why did I backslide? I know there were several factors...lack of sleep, stress, illness, husband traveling. It's just plain hard to keep it all together.

This week, I returned to work full time...I've been PT for the last 10 months.  Except...today, my first day, the baby woke up with a fever.  So I'm starting my first FT week not working FT.  In order for me to lose weight, sadly, I have to count calories.  I'm not one of the lucky ones.

 I've lost weight I the past on weight watchers.  The dirty secret about WW is that every few years, they change their plan. It is, in part, due to new information on health and diet. It is also, I believe, a way to get more money.  Each change means you have to keep attending meetings, or continue your on line membership or buy new materials. Thing is? The last two iterations didn't work for me, so I cancelled my on line membership and decided to go with straight calories.

This, my friends, takes time.  I have a hard enough time cooking dinner with a one year old underfoot.  If I am counting calories, I basically need to know what I am eating a day in advance.  I managed to make a pasta dish for dinner...tasty but looked awful...brown.  Then I needed to plan tomorrow. After I got the baby to sleep, I
Scooped out pasta into three Tupperware.
Started boiling eggs...which is so bad with kids...so easily distracted, I've almost cooked them dry.
Made a side salad.
Oops, baby woke up again...picked him up, turned down the eggs, rocked him back to sleep, turned the eggs back on
Washed blueberries
Made soda water

Now I am sitting typing on the iPad because my kid and hubby have been fighting over the computer.

How can you be sure that you have what it takes long term?  For one, you have to know what works. You have to be willing to stick with it over the long haul.  For me this means planning my meals in advance, planning my exercise . When I recommit to my plan, at first I have to stay away from triggers...chips, alcohol, chocolate, eating out.  This most recent time, I've decided to give myself a day off a week, at most, from counting. This doesn't mean I go hog wild, it means I get a day off from the tedium. It also means if I have two parties in one week, I have to be very careful at at least one and count calories.

It also means you have to go with it. There is nothing I'd love more right now than to be training for a triathlon or doing P90X daily.  My life, my ankle, my knee won't allow it.  They WILL allow me to lift, swim, bike, and do short walks, so that's what I do.

How am I looking long term? Only time will tell. Week one of my recommitment saw me down 3.2 pounds, so yay me! Only 37 more to go.

Those sneaky "Special Occasion" Calories

I know you've been there.  You are trying to watch your weight, or lose weight, and so are either carefully counting every calorie or are just staying away from high calorie and/or trigger foods.

And then.  There they are.  The "pushers".

The pushers come in many forms.  Sometimes they are overweight friends who want company - they really don't want you to lose weight.  Sometimes they are skinny friends, who see you as the "fat friend" and are threatened by the idea of you trimming down.  Sometimes they are well-meaning, normal-weight friends who have never struggled with their weight.  They can eat a brownie or piece of cake, and it never goes to their hips.  Or they don't have food issues, so they can eat a single cookie or drink a glass of wine, and that's it.  They can leave it after that.

A favorite comment from a "pusher" if you turn down that cake is "But it's a special occasion!"

This, my friends, for most of us, is total bullshit.

At some point, long ago, it really made sense.  When I was a child in the 70's, we didn't eat out.  Meals were mostly cooked from scratch (with some canned soup and bologna sandwiches).  We rarely had chips or soda in the house.  Cookies were baked from scratch.  Special occasions were special - Thanksgiving.  Christmas.  New year's.  Birthdays for the kids (most of the time, 3 of us).  That's...5 special occasions a year.  Add in the occasional party or other event and it was certainly still less than 12.

But these days, how special are they?  I'll tell you how special.

Let's start with June 1.
1 year old birthday parties: 5.  I have attended 5 of these and declined to attend at least as many.
My own baby's birthday dinner: 1
My birthday (I was on a plane, there was no cake involved): 1
Our anniversary: 1
Company BBQ: 1
Retirement party: 1
Friends visiting/ French festival: 1
Days where there was cake or cheesecake at work: 2

So in 6 weeks, there were 13 "special occasions" with the opportunity to eat sweets, cake, drink wine or beer, or eat fried/ unhealthy food.  That's two per week.

That doesn't even factor in the school aged child.  He attends at least 5-7 birthday parties a year.  Cookies and chips are a regular thing at camp and school.  Sometimes he feels that  he should get dessert every night.  Every night??  We've set it at 2x a week, but still there are "special occasions" like tomorrow's concert in the park.  No, I'm not packing sweets, but if his friends are there and they have them, he will eat them.

This is why it's very important to define "special occasion" calories.  After I had my second baby, I met with a dietitian online (she happens to be a friend).  She defined various foods as "everyday", "once in awhile" and "special occasion".  And "special occasion" foods are once a MONTH.  How do you handle the "pushers" who don't get that?

I simply decline the cake and say "I don't like cake" (which is mostly true).  If it's a good friend, I simply state that at my age, I simply cannot spare the calories. 

Some people, however, will never get it.  So be strong, friends.  Understand "Special Occasion" calories and decide how often they will enter your life.  Accept that we are all different.  That 24-year old marathon runner will be able to eat a lot more than that 43-year old occasional exerciser.  Try not to compare yourself to other people's options.  It's just depressing.  (It has gotten to the point that I don't even read any blog post that is a dessert.  I will not make them.  I will not eat them.  I just press the delete button.)

And because I want to post a photo, here's a pic of my little sweet boy on his first birthday, eating his first piece of cake!  And so far, only. 

We're BAAACK...

from vacation.  To an empty fridge.  I'm still figuring out what we are out of.  Like ketchup.

We spent two weeks on the east coast.  I'd say glorious, but man, we had the worst weather ever.  I enjoyed visiting family, but seriously - rain and thunderstorms every day in PA, then 90-95F and 90% humidity in NY.  Where you just sit, in a non-air conditioned home and sweat...

We've been back for half a week.  We muddled through the week and did a fair bit of eating out on the weekend, including eating at the French festival (man, $54, what a racket).  Yesterday was our anniversary (17!!) and we did nothing special, just hanging out with some great friends who were visiting from the Bay Area.

I have been getting back into the cooking groove.  For the first week of vacay, I did all the cooking.  Not much of a vacation eh?  Week two: nothing.

This weekend I have been trying to get back into the weekend prep during nap times.  I return to full time in a week (yikes) and those 8 hours a week have to come from somewhere.  Hopefully not sleep.  Or exercise.

Here's what's on the menu:
Crockpot tri-tip (yesterday)
Crockpot refried beans (today)
Salad

Fruit!

Pasta salad with homemade pesto, chicken, and vegetables (carrots, zucchini, roasted red peppers from last summer, tomatoes).

Lots and lots of dishes today. 

On to my fitness level: in a word: it sucks. Okay, that was two words.  I seem to have found 20 lbs since last October.  I decided to join Biz in her latest diet bet, but my computer was on the fritz - so I decided to do it on my own.  I need to lose 7 lbs in 30 days.  I put $25 in an envelope.  If I do it - I keep it.  If I don't - I donate it to the YMCA.  Boy, calorie counting is hard work. 

I am limited in the exercise that I can do right now.  I have achilles tendonitis that makes running and long walks painful.  So I figured I'd try more biking and swimming.

I want to get back into riding my bike to work 2x a week (Mondays and Fridays).  Right now with summer camp, it makes pick up/ drop off hard.  So today, I drove to work with my bike on the back and biked home (10 miles).  I will bike in tomorrow.  And it will hurt.  A lot.  Because today hurt, a lot.  In the prime of my fitness level (2009-2010), I could bike to work in about 45 minutes.  It would take 50-55 minutes to get home (bigger hills, tired at the end of the day).  Well, today, the bike home was 66 minutes.  Yucky.  Hopefully in a month the bike to work will be closer to 45 min.  A goal to shoot for! (In addition to the 7 pounds.)

Okay, is it me, or does it look like the photos from my new phone are actually better than the ones from the camera??

My "Use it Up" Phase

Well folks, we are getting close to our 2-week vacation to visit family.  This is something we do every couple of years.  So, about a week ago I embarked on the "use up the pantry, fridge, and freezer" phase.  It's always good to do that from time to time.

This means when I grocery shop, I try to keep it at a minimum - snacks for the plane, milk, some fresh fruit and veggies (but I am trying to use up frozen right now).

I've had to be somewhat creative.  A little of this, a little of that.  Look, only a tablespoon of sunflower butter, might as well use that up...look, one can of chickpeas, throw that in there.

I've been using frozen fruits for my afternoon snack (except for the day I found a bee in my raspberries - yuck!)  I'm making a bunch of soups (yes, I know it is almost summer, but it's June gloom in So. Cal. and at least it's cool here most days because of it).

In the last week I've used up some pasta, a can of tomatoes, frozen meatballs, chicken breasts, a tri-tip, some corn dogs.  For Father's Day tomorrow (sorry honey, I'm winging it!) I'll probably be making more carrot-turnip soup and baked salmon and kale chips. 

I really like doing these challenges from time to time because I do get to get my creative juices flowing.  I don't get to do that much anymore with a baby (and older child...and job).

There are several foods that I have that I really need to figure out how to use up:

A pile of frozen bananas (I seem to grow the pile faster than I use them)
Frozen spinach
Frozen roasted red peppers
Frozen baby food pears (hmm...maybe I should just feed them to the baby...)
Plus some other stuff in the pantry, which will probably just have to wait until we get back.

One of my FB friends told me about www.supercook.com, which is a website where you put in what you have and it brings up recipes.  I tested it last night with items like chicken, cauliflower, mushrooms...and I was disappointed with the results.  Then I went to Pinterest and did the same and got MUCH better options (or at least, prettier pictures), and the same with google.  Maybe I'm just not impressed with the websites that supercook pulls from.

So based on pinterest and google, tonight I'm making creamy mushroom and roasted cauliflower soup.  And either chicken in the soup or grilled on the side.  That's TBD.

The weekend AFTER we come back we have friends visiting AND it's our 17th anniversary!!  So I'm pretty sure I'm going to save that 9-lb package of grass-fed tri-tip for their visit and do my famous crock-pot tri-tip (tri-tip, salsa, crock-pot).

The weekend cooking chores

I get so inspired by Biz's posts and the many things she cooks every week.  I have to remind myself that her kiddo is up and out, and that's a big factor in the type and amount of cooking she does.

My weekends are often filled with cooking and prep for the week.  It really depends on the week and the weekend.  Last week was the illness week.  My husband and I are both feeling behind at work.  We each took a day off with the sick kiddo.  Then I caught a bit of the bug.  Then I came home on Friday (hubby was home with the kids because school was out), and the baby had a fever (24 hour one, he seems to be fine now).  At least we are fine enough to be cooking today.

The amount of cooking a family does will depend on a lot of factors:
1.  What you like to eat
2.  The number of kids you have
3.  The ages and temperaments of your children
4.  The jobs that you have and their schedules
5.  The family you have in town (or not)
6.  The extracurriculars

I remember having a discussion with friends about this.  One friend was amazed with how much cooking the neighbor and I do sometimes.  Well, my neighbor works part time, but that means 4 days per week.  She often spends a great deal of time on Friday cooking, which gives her a head start.  Her husband makes the bread, and they often roast a chicken in their rotisserie every Sunday night.  I also work part time, but shorter days.  So I do my cooking on Saturday and Sunday, but also have an hour after I get home before dinner every night (often that time is spent feeding the baby and bottle and solid food though.)  This particular friend has a job where she is on the road a lot.  So some days she can be home early, but often it's her husband who picks up the kids.  It's hard to cook when you aren't at home.

Last weekend I only really made a pasta dish.  I made a big pot of soup the day I was home with the sick kid.  This weekend I am trying to get a bit more done.

We ate the last burrito on Thursday night, so I knew it was time to make more.  I am trying to limit my shopping right now because we're visiting family for two weeks soon, so I'd rather use up what we have in the fridge and pantry.  Usually, most of my weekend cooking chores revolve around prepping the CSA vegetables.  Washing and cutting are time consuming.

So here's the weekend plan:
1.  Cook crockpot refried beans - DONE (put them in on Friday night, and out Saturday morning.  Still have to mash.)
2.  Cook crockpot tri-tip - DONE.  My neighbor was the inspiration for this dish.  She mentioned offhand once that her boss's "Bachelor meal" is a tri-tip in the crockpot with a can or two of black beans and a jar of salsa over the top. It's now my go-to recipe for tri-tip (I do have others, but this is easy and delish.)  This was a big save too - yesterday we drove south to go play mini-golf.  We were coming home at 5:30 and were STARVING.  It would have been so easy to get a burrito somewhere.  But luckily we had a bag of sliced apples and a small bag of cashews in the diaper bag and that kept us going until we got home.  We had the beef in tacos.
3.  Make basil-arugula pesto - DONE.  It's basil season at the CSA.  I've made plain arugula pesto too, but that's pretty bitter, so I am always happy when I get both the same week.  My pesto is nut-free.
4.  Make bean-tri-tip burritos.  We start an assembly line with shredded cheese too and roll them up and wrap in plastic, put in the freezer.  This used to be just a lunch thing for hubby and I, but now it's turned into a great dinner and lunch thing for the kiddo too.
5.  Make more carrot-turnip ginger soup.  I have a bunch of carrots and turnips, and it's the only recipe with turnips that I actually like, vs. just tolerate.
6.  Wash strawberries - DONE (hubby did this)
7.  Slice another cantaloupe (when the first one is gone)

Pesto!