ASK Musings

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Monthly Archive: September 2012

Wednesday

26

September 2012

1

COMMENTS

Real Food Week 3 Results and Week 4 Challenge

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Well, we continue on with this experiment and it’s getting interesting, especially because the ‘big’ challenges are still looming. Last week was the local meat challenge: nothing that was raised further than 100 miles from where we live. Effectively that meant being vegetarians for the week. We don’t tend to cook meat at home, so that left eating out, and even eating out it was mostly vegetarian choices. We did, however, go to Local 360. Granted, their version of local is 360 mile radius, but frankly I’m okay with that. Plus, supporting such an awesome restaurant with such a cool mission was fine with us!

We both continue to keep up with the other aspects of the challenge for the most part. A couple of days it’s been more like five fruits and vegetables instead of six, but it’s definitely a very conscious effort. And during this experiment I found that a lunch of steamed zucchini topped with grated parmesan is a really fantastic meal. Add some berries on the side and that’ll hold you for a bit for sure. The drink limitations are still in effect, made easier by the pack of sparkling water we ordered that arrived last week. I’m planning to stay with that one a more permanent basis, so diet sodas are hopefully primarily gone, but I’ll definitely still be enjoying the occasional spiced cider or hot chocolate this fall. I’ve always preferred to eat rather than drink my calories, but cutting out some of the chemicals in the diet drinks is a nice change.

So, we move on to this week’s challenge: no fast food and nothing deep fried. The fast food ban isn’t really that much of a challenge for us, as other than the late night visit to Dick’s or Hot Mama’s Pizza, we don’t tend to patronize those places unless we’re on the road. But the deep fried limitation will be a bit harder. I was faced with going out to Mexican food for dinner last night, and thankfully my friend is also not partaking in fried foods so we were able to just say no chips please. If they were on the table that was going to be a test. I really love chips and salsas, but all that oil hanging on really isn’t great. Subbing in a salad to replace fries when getting a sandwich or burger will be a good choice, although not one I’ll ALWAYS follow going forward, because French fries are yummy. Which reminds me, I really want to go to Vol de Nuit when we’re in NYC in November. Mmmmm. Belgian fries.

I can, however, already tell that this is not a challenge I’m going to continue with in its entirety past this week. I think I will incorporate a little more fried food common sense into my food choices, as it’s not REALLY something I think about that much. Making sure I don’t double up on fried food in one week is probably a realistic goal past this week. And the next time we’re going to be on the road, I’m going to look to pack stuff so we don’t have to stop at a fast food restaurant.

Next week almost seems like a cheat: try at least two new whole foods. Hmmm. Maybe we can pick a grain or something? Or perhaps eggplant or spaghetti squash. That’s right, I’ve not actually eaten either of those things, but who knows! Maybe we’ll find a cool new food we like.

Tuesday

18

September 2012

0

COMMENTS

Week 2 Real Food Results and Week 3 Challenge

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Well, we survived Disneyland. And not just Disneyland, but Disneyland in 108 degree heat. And we did it while (mostly) sticking to the week two direction: natural beverages. The website framed it as limiting beverages to water, coffee, tea, milk, and wine, plus one glass of juice at some point during the week. Since her reasoning was based on Michael Pollan’s discussion of alcohol in general, we decided to keep beer and spirits in there as well. And we were primarily successful. Except for the strawberry margarita I had on Friday night, our drinks fit the bill. And I survived not having diet coke after diet coke in the crazy heat.

Going forward, I think I am going to stick with this one, with a couple of exceptions. The first being I can have a hot chocolate every week or two. Yes, it’s basically sugar with some milk thrown in, but I do love it. And one every 7-14 days is a lot better than … daily. Yikes. I think sticking with alcohol beverages that aren’t mixed with fake or heavily sugared drinks is also the plan going forward, but I also recognize that, on occasion, I’m going to have a daiquiri. And it will be super yummy.

We also managed to keep up the two fruits or veggies at each meal from week one! We were able to find salads and fresh fruit at Disneyland, and the only real failure was Sunday night after our flight back. The pot stickers WERE vegetarian, but still. No veggie or fruit side.

The challenge this week? Limit you meat to local, limit it to 3-4 meals total, and don’t make it the centerpiece of your meal. Well, it’s Tuesday, and I’ve already (I think) failed on the local front. But in my defense … I had a tasting for our wedding yesterday, and one of the items isn’t usually locally sourced. As I did actually want to taste what we’ll be serving our guests, I didn’t pass on it. But the rest of the week shouldn’t be a problem, since we aren’t big meat eaters in the first place, and it’ll be fun to be that person asking wait staff if the chicken eats hazelnuts.

Tuesday

11

September 2012

0

COMMENTS

Real Food Week 1 Recap plus Week 2 Challenge

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Well, the first week was a success! It was fun to try to figure out how to make sure we were each eating at least two fruits or vegetables with each meal. It sort of bled through to everything else; it seemed odd to eat something really unhealthful with a side of steamed zucchini and some cherry tomatoes. My lunches were especially healthy – it was easier to just bring it each day then to try to buy something that had enough fresh produce to fulfill the requirement.

I also found myself making (slightly) better choices the two nights we ate out – I even chose salad instead of fries one night. I know. Since we know what is coming in other weeks (e.g., only 100% whole grains), we're also making some better choices at the grocery store. As we go through, trying to clear out foods that will eventually be deemed not so good, we're replacing them with what will be the better choice.

For the most part. I mean, I still bought canned whipped cream to go with the fresh strawberries we got at Whole Foods this week. What? The sweetener restriction is still a few weeks away.

The challenge this week: the only beverages we should consume are water (still or sparkling), coffee, tea, milk (cow or other) and wine. And if we want to sweeten our coffee or tea, we can only use pure maple syrup or honey. Now, I thought it was wine or beer, which seemed to be the rule of the full challenge, based off of the blog comments. I'm fine with beer being included, because it is suggested that there are some benefits to alcohol in general (although wine seems to be best), and because beer isn't a big concern of mine. Austin will look to keep to the average of one alcoholic drink per night, and I'll try very hard to not have hot chocolate all week.

We're also keeping up the two fruits/veggies this week because we both really liked that. We're traveling this weekend to an amusement park, so that alone should be an interesting challenge within a challenge.

Tuesday

4

September 2012

0

COMMENTS

100 Days of Real Food

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Thanks to my friend Ashley 'liking' something on Facebook, I saw this blog and was pretty quickly clicking through all the content. If you know me, you know I find food and health extremely interesting. I recently finished a Peter Singer book on food, and was suckered into buying the lovely illustrated Food Rules by Michael Pollan (thanks Anthropologie). I find the information so fascinating but haven't done much with it other than paying a lot of attention to whether my berries are organic, and continuing to reduce the amount of meat I consume.

But I love challenges – especially ones that build upon each other. I like setting goals and trying to meet them. And since I think of September and Labor Day as a great time to try to reboot habits I hope to have (it's like a new school year starting), I'm going to take a stab at the 14 weeks of mini-challenges. Austin is in it with me, so hopefully we'll be able to improve our eating habits and overall health. Luckily we're both active and pretty healthy to begin with, so none (well, almost none) of these changes are going to be horrific. I think it's going to be fun.

This week we start with eating two fruits or vegetables with every meal. That's not a huge challenge, but the point is to actually REPLACE something that's less healthy. So instead of a Pasta Roni side, have a second veggie side. It'll be a nice way to ease into things, especially because we're also taking this week to sort of scrub out some of the packaged and less healthful food without wasting it by throwing it out. This should help us make better choices as the weeks go on. 

From my perspective, week 6 will be a challenge, as I was raised on things like non-fat milk and low-fat products. I've read many different places that these items really are not better for you, but getting the prevailing mindset out of my head is going to be a challenge. And of course, anyone who has ever met me knows that weeks 9 and 12 may be my downfall (and the latter coincides with Thanksgiving – perfection).

I plan to update the blog each Sunday going forward, so if you care, great. If not, feel free to set up whatever filters you have – I'll try to put "Real Food" in the title each time.