Eat Your Vegetables Day

June 17, 2010 is

Eat Your Vegetables Day

Remember when you were a kid and your parents always told you that "you have to eat your vegetables." They were right. Vegetables are essential if you want to live a longer, healthier life. Not to mention that they are also delicious! Fix a big healthy, delicious salad for yourself and your family today and celebrate Eat Your Vegetables Day!

Eat Your Vegetables Day

Snack Time!

YJDKIY had been looking for a healthy, filling snack and totally forgot about cottage cheese! The last time I had it at a restaurant and thought it was tasty, I figured it was the full fat kind and way too unhealthy. I vaguely remember buying some store brand no fat and thinking it was the most disgusting thing ever.

Lucky for me, Organic Valley has the remedy! Lowfat still has the great flavor (a little heavy on the salt though - even the other product commenters said that!) and cuts a lot of the bad stuff in the half cup serving.

Calories 100 Calories from Fat 20
% Daily Value*
Total Fat 2g	3%
Saturated Fat 1.5g	8%
Trans Fat 0g
Cholesterol 10mg	3%
Sodium 450mg	19%
Total Carbohydrate 4g	1%
Dietary Fiber 0g	0%
Sugars 3g
Protein 15g
Vitamin A 4% • Vitamin C 0% Calcium 8% • Iron 0%

   
Ingredients: Organic Cultured Pasteurized Skim Milk, Organic Pasteurized Cream, Organic Nonfat Milk, Citric Acid, Salt, Organic Guar Gum, Organic Locust Bean Gum, Acidophilus and Bifidus Cultures, Vitamin A Palmitate, Enzymes.

Also, in case you didn't know, OV supplies the milk to Stonyfield for my beloved yogurts. They're also an socially and environmentally responsible company. 

Your weekly purchase of 16 oz Lowfat Cottage Cheese prevents the following annually:
10 lbs Synthetic Nitrogen
2.2 oz Synthetic Herbicides & Pesticides
 

Guest cook

YJDKIY was off cooking duty the other night for reasons that shall remain unstated, however, the guest cook did a fine job with the intended (modified) recipe. I rallied in the end to take a few more photos with the fancy camera.

----

We stealthy planned ahead and grilled this for Monday night's salad!

Local Flashback

So, yesterday YJDKIY was flipping through the June issue of Real Simple and came across this tip:

A how to on cuffing jeans this summer, circa

YJDKIY, 1990-91? Ack! I can maybe understand some teenyboppers doing this since that whole 80s look is new for them, bu Real Simple is geared to people who have already experienced that fashion disaster (hello acid wash jeans, orange kicks and oversized Esprit sweatshirt!).

Charlotte Tastetacular

YJDKIY waited as late as possible to allow things to cool off...95 in the middle of the city + thousands of people = not a happy crowd situation. But, we headed out for (our third) Taste of Charlotte about 6:30. The weather had cooled off a little by the time we arrived, but the crowd was at epic traffic jam proportions (nothing makes you hungry like the smell of sweaty people?!). Note, these are NOT fancy camera photos, I love my iPhone Flickr app for just this purpose.

Ginormous fan! (ahaha, pun accidental, get it?!)

We started off with some Sea Bass (I know, I know, eco worst) from Cafe Sienna (I feel compelled to note that we split almost all of these taste size treats, so even though it looks like a lot of food, they were all tiny and shared).

Next was a Buffalo Chicken Slider (YJDKIY didn't taste this one at all!) from The Pizza Peel & Taproom

Then a Chicken Spiedie Wrap from Dilworth Neighborhood Grille

Free Honey Moon and Blue Moon (Southern girls glisten, they don't sweat, riiiight!?)

My favorite was next, we got an Avocado Chill and a Crispo-Frigo from Blynk  (all organic and on my list!) The sandwich was extra yummy with fresh mozza, red peppers, basil and olive oil and extra filling. (I probably could have stopped here.)

But, there was free Fage with honey and we scored two free coins listening to bad karaoke (don't worry Oikos, I still love you more, Fage is too chalky/milky!)

And THEN, free PeanutButter ChoclateHaagen Dazs (please excuse the icky blood blister on my finger from 2 weeks ago! Also, I totally didn't enjoy this, after my froyo fixation, ice cream is just too heavy and too sweet and too guilty)

Which did not go well with Chana Masala with Vegetable Pullav from Woodlands Indian Cuisine (all vege!), but it was very tastey (and spicy) on its own.

At this point YJDKIY was a swimmy melted mess, and finished with some tangy-sweet Lindy's Lemonade Italian Ice. At first I was confused about the fact this was coming out of a box/package just like at the grocery store, but upon researching for the blog, YJDKIY was extra excited to discover this company is based in Charlotte! This might be the new summer alternative to Food Lion FroYo!

Luckily we made a round trip of about 2.25 miles walking, so the janunt back to our super stealthy free parking was nice to digest all the tasties.

The Daily Plate

Decidedly not the diet site!!! :P

SUNDAY: Grilled Chicken* & Eggplant pasta salad with artichoke hearts, grape tomatoes and feta

(Thanks, Danny!) *unfreeze chicken Saturday night

MONDAY: Salad with edamame and sweet potatoes

TUESDAY: Sauted tofu, sauted garlic-kale, summer squash

WEDNESDAY: TJ's Pork Tenderloin Florentine, asparagus, bread

THURSDAY: TVP sloppy joe, broccoli salad/slaw (never made this last time it was scheduled!)

FRIDAY: Grilled scallops on tortilla chips with Avocado salsa

SATURDAY: Lemony zucchini, chickpea, red pepper, basil salad and black bean cakes

Tempting Tempeh Work

(alternately titled The One with a LOT of Photos)

YJDKIY got a Nikon D5000 DSLR for work this week, and decided to bring it home to master barely become aware of the 1093481 setting/buttons/possibilities it offers for photo goodness. What better practice than the return of fancy cookin' AND the completion of the YJDKIY backsplash (besides you know, an actual Museum type event that I would be photographing in real life)?

TJ's Organic Tempeh....my very first time cooking or eating it, surprisingly! The recipe at hand from Whole Foods (it was also surprisingly hard to find a tempeh recipe that wasn't burgers, barbecue or scrambles).

Halved and triangulated

Charmoula marinade, but I didn't have broth so I had to sub water, plus lemon juice, olive oil, fresh dried basil, parsley, garlic, kosher salt

Could have used about half of this

Grape tomatoes (special fancy FOOD setting on the camera!) - good thing I added these and actually ate them, the sweetness really helped the tangy overload

Zuch slices

Marinating

Sides - creamer potatoes and kale (which later turned into THIS disastacular)

All assembled and

Ready to bake at 400 for 20 minutes (which could have been long so the marinade evaporated, but alas) - tempeh in marinade, zucchini, tomatoes topped with cracked pepper and more fresh dried basil. While that was baking...

 The canine component was getting worried I'd forget to fill up her bowl with all the photography (speaking of taking forever, washing AND drying hands between each step!)

The other YJDKIY diner showed up fresh from Denver with some summery flowers! :)

So impatient she can't sit straight!

Plated!

The potatoes were superfantastic delicious! The tempeh...eh, it'll have to go grown on me. I like the texture, but it was too tangy (maybe that was the cook's marinade fault though). And of course, the camera...in love and ready to shoot!

Oh, here's the backsplash!

All that's left is some touch up painting and a lighting solution!

$5.25

Farmer's Market Eggplant, green pepper, cucumber, summer squash, green beans

THIS

IS A PROBLEM. I absolutely despise buying grocery store produce now. Not only do I feel guity for not buying local and supporting the farmers in my area, but my farmer's market produce never costs $3 for only one serving, never is sneakily covered (on the inside leaves) in rotting kale worms, gnats and grossness. My farmer's market produce never ruins an entire meal by being too disgusting to even try to clean off an eat. (yes I know you probably can't see them, they're there trust me, they just landed on the bottom when I threw it all down in shock horror and amazement.)

I seriously considered bagging the whole gross ball of moldy, bug infested Cal-organics kale up, fishing the receipt out of the trash and taking it back to Harris Teeter. But then I considered the gas it would take to start up my car, crank the AC because it is in fact 92 degrees out, drive there and back...only to return with another bunch of kale that also had to be cold-trucked across the country and had a carbon footprint as big as the state of California. GRAR!

When the moon hits your eye...

Like a big pizza pie, that's amore! Anyone remember Mr. Sollecito singing that? (In trying to find SOME kind of reference on the internets to that infamous Boone pizza parlor, all I found was this article, which is also kind of fun YJDKIY had a birthday party there...what year was that?). I digressed.

Since fancy dinner cookin' has been on hiatus this week AND there is a new fridge that actually accomodates frozen pizza boxes, I stocked up on an HT Naturals Organic Cheese Pizza last week. It has been a LONG time since I had a frozen pizza instead of just making it...maybe almost a year! 

For toppings, I couldn't decide between fresh basil or on its last leg green pepper, so I went with both. But these toppings really don't go well together, so halfsies it was!

Well now I have to

A while back, YJDKIY posted about learning to love the treadmill. Amazingly, I have and some mornings, gasp, I think I even prefer it to the elliptical. I think I might have also mentioned that I have always had an extreme aversion to running, mainly because it just wasn't comfortable, and I don't like exercising in heat and humidity (hello North Carolina?).

So now, having recently taken note of several much older, much less fit people running, I've decided that surely I can do that. And, to top it off (don't think I've mentioned this though), I hate setting goals/deadlines, but lo and behold I've gone and done THAT too. YJDKIY is going to keep you from knowing that just yet, but as it gets closer perhaps I'll fill you in. Thirdurmore, I have this whackado plan that if I can learn to use running as an efficient means of cardio, I can quit paying $40/month for the YMCA since I only use it for cardio and do weights at home, and then, the following will pay for itself in ahem, a few, months.

------------End backstory, begin actual point of this post. -----------

I went to Fleet Feet in Winston-Salem to find out exactly what kind of shoes will make this experience more tolerable. After talking with superfriendly salesguy Rich for a few minutes about my crazy ideas on running, it was time to take some measurements.

1. Rich looked at my feet...apparently they're decent, no bunions or callouses (TMI?) nothing weird to note (except man you have to be outgoing and nonhinky to have that job). I do seem to have high arches.

2. Next, he placed a sizing tool thingy on an inclined plane (45 degrees) and measured the size, but also made a mark (look close you can see them) where the 1st metatarsal hit the guide. Then, we did the same thing but standing. The difference between these marks shows how much your foot "flattens out" when weighted or in use/motion. The distance between my marks was much less than normal, usual. I need a 6.5 and could possibly consider a wide, but not a necessity.

3. Finally, Rich watched me walk. It's kind of odd to concentrate on not concentrating on walking! I've noticed lately, and he saw immediately that my heel hits the ground solidly, straight on, but tends to roll slightly outward when weight is applied and never passes the mid point when it comes back. This means I have a neutral gait, where a lot of people tend to roll inward and overpronate.

4. It was time to try on some shoes and make some decisions! After a little conversation about socks (despite the fact that I hate them too and would much rather wear none).  We talked about inserts, and it really was clear how crappy the factory ones are. I tried two kinds, and one felt great while the other was weird and didn't fit my foot at all.

Rich brought me three pairs of shoes. I was a little afraid of this part, since I know you are not supposed to pick shoes based on color, but I really really am opposed to white kicks...hate them (YJDKIY is full of opinions on this topic apparently).

A normal New Balance pair (WR 759CS...yay they were grey and hot pink!), a wide New Balance pair (eh, gray and light blue), and a pair of Adidas that I didn't even see. NB#1 fit great - I could really tell the difference in the way my foot was supported and stayed in place, and it felt like I had springs under the ball and heel of my foot! NB#2 was awful, my foot slid around and it felt like could walk on water with those boats. Clearly don't need a wide! So based on that, he decided the Adidas would be too wide and long for my foot, but he did bring out a pair of Saucony's after I mentioned liking my current ones ok. They were way too tight across the top and too narrow toward my toes. I tried one on the left and the NB#1s on the right and the choice was clear!

That was it! He cut my inserts to fit the shoe perfectly matching the crappy factory ones, put them in, sold me on some moisture wicking super thin socks and rang me up.

I won't tell you how much, but let's just say all that came to more than 3 months of YMCA membership (the inserts were a little $ shocking, they mean business! But, when I got home and put on my old shoes that I THOUGHT were cushy and supportive, I could honestly tell a significant difference, and Rich told me they'd last at least 12-18 months, longer than the shoes!). As we've learned though, if there is one thing that motivates me, it's spending money!