06.06.2012

Meeting the Dietician

by marilynk

In November, I met with a dietician who is attached to the gastroenterology clinic that my Crohn’s specialist belongs to. I’m glad I met with her, but I honestly didn’t find the appointment all that helpful.

Before the appointment, I had to keep a food diary for three days so the dietician could see what my eating habits are like: what foods, when and how often I eat and if I noticed any symptoms that were tied to certain meals. She didn’t see any nutritional deficiencies in my diary and she liked how the meals were spaced out. Her only suggestions were to:

  1. Eat at least 3 food groups at meals and 2 at snacks (so throughout the day you have your bases covered).
  2. Continue eating small meals throughout the day (it’s easier on my digestive system than 3 large meals).
  3. Continue eating as wide a variety of foods as possible…until something triggers symptoms (the goal is to get as many nutrients from actual food as possible).

We also talked about the two kinds of fibre and how to use each to address symptoms. Of course, my symptoms are atypical, so that’s not much of a worry for me at this point. And we talked about pre- and pro-biotics (personally, I think these are mostly marketing hype – I’ll stick to greek yoghurt). There is some evidence that omega-3 fatty acids are beneficial and I should probably eat more fish, but I think I’ll stick to flax seed and nuts. It was a nice chat and the dietician is a lovely woman. I just didn’t feel like “keep doing what you’re doing until you feel horrible, then stop eating the thing that made you feel bad” was particularly useful advice.

Things were going pretty well diet-wise before Christmas, but fell off the rails in the last few months. You’ll see in upcoming posts that I’m starting to get things back on track.

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04.06.2012

Tomato Sauce Challenge 4 & 5: Sloppy Joe & Chili

by marilynk

Hi guys! Long time, no writing. Let’s just say life got away from me a bit. But I’m back and have a few posts queued up!

I actually thought these two had posted before I took my little break. Sorry about that! I’ve combined them into one post so we can move on to current things more quickly. Enjoy!

Sloppy Joe

For the Sloppy Joe, I combined the rest of my sauce with browned ground beef, some shredded carrot and a can of tomato paste. I ate it on a bun (toasted) from Tree Stone Bakery, topped with shredded cheddar cheese. A simple side salad rounded out the meal.

and

Chili

I am not a traditionalist when it comes to chili. My Texan relatives would never acknowledge what I make as chili. That being said, I like mine better. To me, chili should have lots of veggies and beans in it. Meat in sauce is just…boring.

So. My chili consisted of the Sloppy Joe mix from the night before with the following additions: pre-soaked red kidney beans (1 cup dried) that had been soaked overnight (a can of any kind of bean would work just as well), diced tomatoes (3), and a diced orange pepper. I also added chili powder, garlic powder, and some cumin. I had the chili with Tabasco sauce, shredded cheddar cheese, and a nice thick slice of Prairie Mill sourdough.

Again, I’m sorry for the gap between posts. But as you can see, a jar of pasta sauce can generate a number of different meals and sometimes leftovers don’t have to just be reheated and served. I hope this week’s worth of meal ideas inspires some of you to experiment with your ingredients. If you have another idea for a food challenge, please send it my way!

25.11.2011

Tomato Sauce Challenge 3: Poached Egg on Hash

by marilynk

My first post from my iPhone…I hope this works. Last night I made one of my go-to simple and quick dinners: an egg poached in sauce. It’s a great because you can serve it on top of anything. A piece of cheese toast with tomato? Sure! Leftover stir fried veggies? Perfect! Or, one of my favourites, shoestring potatoes pan fried with veggies.

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24.11.2011

Tomato Sauce Challenge 2: Homemade Pizza

by marilynk

I’m sort of terrible for double-booking myself if I don’t write things down. In this case, I didn’t write down my plans with my mom so I forgot she was taking me to Langano Skies and then Michael Ondaatje’s reading at the Winspear Centre Tuesday night. So the challenge will be extended through Sunday.

The other wrench that’s been thrown in the  works of this challenge is a new symptom from the Crohn’s: a complete lack of appetite. Yesterday was the first time I’ve experienced it and I’m hoping it doesn’t last, but I just couldn’t bring myself to make anything for dinner last night. So this is what I’d planned to make rather than what I actually ate, but still think it sounds great and I will still make it.

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22.11.2011

Tomato Sauce Challenge 1: Pasta & Sauce and Spinach & Pomegranate Salad

by marilynk

Ok, so this is the expected way to use the sauce, but I do love my pasta. And this is a great Meatless Monday option if you do that at your house. I did round-out the meal with a salad, so I did do some recipe-writing for all of you!

I took it easy for the first one.

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21.11.2011

Recipe Challenge: Five Ways to Use Tomato Sauce

by marilynk

I live on my own and most recipes are designed for families of four, so I end up with a lot of leftovers. This usually isn’t a bad thing, since I like taking leftovers as lunch the next day and you already know how much I like to cook batches and then freeze some of it. But sometimes it’s not leftovers of a full meal, it’s leftover ingredients. I like the challenge of finding different ways to use extra ingredients in different ways so I don’t end up eating the same meal multiple days in a week. So I’ve given myself a little challenge: 5 dinners in 5 days using one 1L jar of homemade tomato sauce.

Everyone uses pasta sauce.  I love pasta and prepared sauces (from the store or homemade) are a great way to get a meal on the table quickly, but a jar of sauce can be jazzed up and used as a base for a lot more than just noodles. Your family also probably uses a litre of sauce at one meal – any of these recipes can be made individually for a larger group.

I hope you’ll follow along this week to see what I come up with. The recipes will run Tuesday-Saturday. My sauce is defrosting in the fridge as you read this!

20.11.2011

Update on Beauty Products

by marilynk

Some of you will remember back in August I wrote about giving up commercial shampoos, conditioners, facial cleansers, moisturizers, and exfoliants. I finished up (or gave away to my mom & sister) the commercial products I still had and replaced them with baking soda & water (shampoo), apple cider vinegar & water (conditioner), olive and castor oils & a hot wash cloth (facial cleanser & moisturizer), and ground adzuki beans (exfoliant). Click here for more details on the recipes I use.

I’ve been using these methods consistently now for more than two months, so I thought I’d give you an update – especially now that the weather’s nose-dived and we’re all dealing with Edmonton’s super dry air. Generally, I really like this change and I’m going to stick with it, but I think some things need some fine-tuning.

The baking soda and apple cider vinegar work well for my hair (I have pretty fine hair, but lots of it. My hair used to get fairly oily, but my scalp would be dry and itchy). I’m not getting the greasy-by-mid-afternoon look that I used to get pretty often (yay!) and my scalp is still itchy sometimes, it doesn’t seem as bad as before (also yay!). I’ve used all my usual styling products and everything gets cleaned out nicely when I wash my hair. I am finding I need to be careful to make sure I’ve really washed all of my hair, though – there’s a spot right at the crown of my head that I sometimes have to wash twice. I think it’s that the hair there wasn’t fully wet when I pour the baking soda and water on, so it just rolls off the hair and doesn’t get down to the scalp. The vinegar and water spray definitely smells like vinegar when I first spray it on, but the smell is gone even before I rinse my hair. Once it’s dry, my hair feels soft, looks nice and shiny, and doesn’t smell like anything.

The face-cleaning method is awesome. It’s really perfect for me and my love of getting every last second I can in my warm bed on winter mornings. It’s really only 2 steps at night: 1. Rub on the oil mixture & put a hot cloth over your face for a few minutes. 2. Wipe off the excess oil (and makeup, etc.) with the cloth. In the morning, I just splash my face with cold water and pat it dry. My skin feels great too. I have dry cheeks and oily T-zone, so cleansers seemed to over-dry my skin & moisturizers made me feel like my face was greasy. With this method, I don’t feel the greasyness at all, but I might up the olive oil in the mix to combat the drier air we’ve got right now. The other thing I wasn’t sure about was how well this method would clean makeup. I don’t wear tons of makeup, but I consistently wear a mineral foundation (now that I’m not using moisturizer with SPF, it’s even more important), mascara, blush, and lip stuff (usually gloss). The oils do a great job of breaking down the makeup and it comes right off on the cloth – even the mascara. And I’m not worried about getting the stuff in my eyes ’cause it’s non-toxic and it doesn’t burn or do anything harmful.

As I mentioned in the last post, I’d used adzuki bean scrubs before, so I’ll just say I continue to love it. I use the scrub on my face on days that I’m washing my hair (2-3 times a week) and my skin feels nicely polished, but not dried out. Since I found a good container for keeping the scrub in the shower, I’ve also started using it to scrub my body too – anywhere that needs a little exfoliation, like my elbows, back, and feet. It works great.
The thing I like best about making these changes is that I’m saving a ton of money. I filled the container of olive/castor oil mix at the beginning of August and it’s not empty yet. I filled the containers in my shower at the beginning of September and I just filled the baking soda again yesterday, the others won’t need to be filled for a while yet. I kinda wish I had a record of how much I spent on shampoo, conditioner, and face products last year so I could make a real comparison, but I know it’s significant. None of the products I’m using now are costly in an of themselves and they last much longer than commercial products. I’m thinking this was a good move!

I reused an existing cleanser bottle. That's an airline-safe 1.7 fl oz that's lasted more than 3 months.

The sugar containers are from IKEA, as is the cup, the spray bottle is reused from an old hair product.

15.11.2011

Delectable Dinners

by marilynk

Last month, I was invited by my lovely friend Sarah to join a group of ladies to attend (and eventually host) a sort of rotating dinner party. The evenings are called Delectable Dinners and the first two evenings have been full of interesting women, great conversation, many photos of cats, and delicious food. The concept is quite low-key and very flexible to different people’s hosting preferences: the hostess gets to decide if she’d like to cook the full dinner, have a pot-luck, or even go out to a restaurant if that’s more her style.

So far, both Dinners have been pot-lucks and I’ve been really impressed with the interesting dishes these ladies bring. I brought a g-free apple pie to the first dinner (it turned out even tastier than the first one) and my contribution to Sunday’s dinner was Cumin Seed Roasted Cauliflower with Yoghurt. I stayed true to the recipe this time, but I used purple cauliflower from Riverbend Gardens. It was beautiful raw and the purple actually intensified when it was cooked. I quite liked the dish and I’ll definitely make it again, but I was really blown away by the rest of the menu: a guacamole with extra veggies, roasted beet hummus, stuffed mushroom caps, broccoli salad, a quinoa/tomato/parmesan bake, bacon-wrapped pork tenderloing (seriously!), and for dessert? Homemade cinnamon rolls and pavlova. Yeah, we eat like that.

I really love seeing (and tasting!) the creativity of the dishes, but the best part of these evenings is the conversation with a really interesting group of women. Most are people I didn’t know before Sarah’s first dinner and I am really happy to be getting to know such great people.

14.11.2011

October is Soup Month

by marilynk

When autumn hits I crave cozy, warm foods and soup is one of my favourites. There’s just something so appealing about a big bowl of goodness on a blustery day. Soup is also a great way to process some of your harvest bounty for the coming cold months. I generally make big batches and freeze the bulk of it – I’m a big fan of cooking once to eat for a bunch of meals. All of the recipes are basically doubled so there’s enough to freeze. Adjust your amounts accordingly!

This month I made 3 different soups: Roasted Corn and Scallop Chowder, Roasted Tomato and Roasted Garlic Soup, and Quick and Easy Borscht. Everything was made with at least some ingredients from EOGG and the tomatoes came from my parents’ garden. There’s a lot of recipe in this post, so I’ll just get to it:

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13.11.2011

Last Night’s Dinner: Roasted Eggplant with Warm Chorizo Chickpea Salad

by marilynk

A few weeks ago, Adam posted photos of his dinner that had me salivating they looked so good. He kindly passed on the link for the recipe he’d used and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. Yesterday I finally had all the ingredients together, so I made it for dinner and it was delicious! I’m not good at following recipes exactly to the letter, so I made a few minor modifications. This is a seriously delicious, one-dish, hearty autumn meal that I think you should try at your earliest convenience. Thanks Adam and France for this great recipe!

Roasted Eggplant with Warm Chorizo Chickpea Salad (adapted from Beyond The Peel)

  • 1 eggplant (from the farmer’s market – will update with the stall name next week)
  • 4 small chorizo sausages
  • 1 medium onion, quartered
  • 3 cloves garlic, sliced (from EOGG)
  • 3 medium tomatoes, quartered (from M&D’s garden)
  • 5 tiny potatoes (from EOGG)
  • 1 sprig rosemary
  • 2 sprigs thyme (from EOGG)
  • 1 can chickpeas
  • 1 Tbs olive oil
  • 1 Tbs red wine vinegar
  • 1/2 tsp Dijon mustard (from The Jam Lady)
  • Parmesan cheese, grated (for serving)

Preheat the oven to 400° F. Slice the eggplant in half, salt the cut sides, and set aside. Remove the sausages from their casings and break up into the bottom of a casserole dish. Add the onion, garlic, tomatoes, and potatoes to the casserole (distributed evenly). Place the rosemary and thyme in the dish. Squeeze the eggplant out over the sink, rinse off the excess salt, and pat dry. Lay the eggplant, cut side down, over the mixture in the casserole dish. Bake for 40 minutes or until the eggplant starts to collapse – stir the mixture once, halfway through the cooking time.

While the salad is baking, put together the vinaigrette by whisking together the olive oil, vinegar, and mustard. When the salad has finished baking, remove the eggplant and set aside. Add the chickpeas and the vinaigrette and toss everything together until well coated.

I eat 90% of my meals at home out of bowls, so I served this by scooping out half the eggplant and topping it with about a quarter of the salad mixture. So good!