Friendsgiving!

November 10th, 2011 | Posted by Karrey in Food - (0 Comments)

Pumpkin Cream Pie

Who has two thumbs and needs a goddamned party? THIS GUY. I’m feeling incredibly burned out from school, and our next break where we don’t have any is the week of Thanksgiving. I’m not one for celebrating oppression of native peoples or the practical extermination of a population, but I can get behind FOOD. So I’m going to have a few of my friends over for some festivities to keep us away from the shopping centers on the day after Turkey Day. And because the people who will be joining us on this day are vegetarian/vegan, planning a feast for the group gets even easier!

APPETIZERS

MAIN COURSE

DESSERT

We’ll probably end up with some cranberry sauce out of a can (Kevin’s favorite) and some bagged stuffing (also Kevin’s favorite). WOW. That’s a lot of food! I hope my friends show up hungry! I should probably start stocking up on leftovers containers now. And maybe I should start doing my research on how to make things ahead/simultaneously. Yeah.

Detox: Day 3

September 23rd, 2011 | Posted by Karrey in Deflabbify | Food - (0 Comments)

I might as well update with the end of my detox, since I’ve finished it! Here’s what I ate:

  • Breakfast: Scrambled eggs, hash brown patty, coffee with almond milk, 1/2 banana (other half fell on the floor, sad face)
  • Lunch: NOTHING, too busy working, grar
  • Dinner: Over easy eggs, hash brown patty (I’m obsessed with these currently), sauteed onions, 1/2 avocado, glass of cranberry juice
  • Snack: Coconut milk ice cream

I even cheated a little at dinner, since I cooked my eggs and onions with a little bit of butter. Oh well. After this day, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to end my detox at 3 days, or go on for 5. I ended it at 3, and have eased back onto grains and dairy slowly. Happily, it’s taking less food to fill me up, even after only eating smaller amounts for such a small time period. I’m also trying to take the focus away from carby, cheesy crap when planning my meals, and I’m satisfied with less. I’d say the experiment was a success!

Today’s calorie count came in at 1,315 with a nice carb deficit of 44. Much better, even with the skipped lunch.

Detox: Day 2

September 20th, 2011 | Posted by Karrey in Deflabbify | Food | Pics, plz - (0 Comments)

Detox Day 2: Lunch

Day 2 went a little something like this:
Breakfast: EGGS! And coffee with almond milk.
Lunch: Salad from home, as seen above, with romaine and spinach, salt, pepper, sunflower seeds, and craisins. This was actually a delicious combination, and I treated the craisins as I do the marshmallows when I’m eating a bowl of Lucky Charms (or, at least, how I used to, gelatin blah blah blah): I spaced them out so that I’d have a little bit of sweet/tart craisin with each bite of salty, savory salad. Yum.
Snack: More coconut milk ice cream from yesterday, as a nice treat after work
Dinner: Masala! I went to dish with my friend Heather about nursing (school+work), and I got pakora and vegan coconut curry. I cut up the pakora into smaller pieces, and then drizzled the curry over the top, using it as a sub for the rice that I usually use as a filler.

I did a little bit of research before going to Masala, and found that pakora are breaded in gram flour, which is actually made from ground chickpeas. Not a grain! WOO! So, that’ll be good for future reference, when I’m trying to take it easy on grains, especially if I end up hitting Masala more than once in a week (not so unlikely).

I was still feeling irrationally angry at everything today, which isn’t a nice feeling, especially when I can rationally look at myself and wonder WTF is wrong with me that I’m feeling that way. I hope it gets better tomorrow.

The calorie count for today came in at approximately 1,171, which is still too low, but getting better.

Detox: Day 1

September 19th, 2011 | Posted by Karrey in Deflabbify | Food - (0 Comments)
Dreamy Coconut

I needed this at the end of the day

So yeah, I started my detox today, after not planning for it WHATSOEVER, OMG. Guess what! There’s dairy/eggs/grains in everything! Here’s what I ate, figuring it out on the fly:

  • Breakfast: Mixed fresh fruit cup, banana, coffee with soymilk
  • Lunch: Big-assed salad, with romaine lettuce and spinach, fresh mushrooms, peas, carrots, sunflower seeds
  • Snack: Scoop of peanut butter
  • Dinner: Grilled squash and onions
  • Snack: A few spoonfuls of this guy over here to the left, nrom

Today was a bad day. Thankfully, I didn’t try to go without my coffee, too. Last week, I ate Cheerios and organic 2% milk every day for breakfast, and it held me over nicely until around 1pm every day (I’m one of those crazy people who likes eating a very late lunch). Today, I was really starting to get hungry at around 11:30, although I was able to make it until 12:30 to eat. I’m guessing a part of it was the lack of fat/protein at breakfast, which is making me rethink the vegan part, since I really love eating eggs in the morning. Maybe I’ll just cut dairy? Ugh. Don’t want to fail at this thing after one day, but don’t know if it’s sustainable.

Do you see this disorganized, scattered thinking? Yeah, this was basically me all day. It’s hard to tell if it’s withdrawal from grains and dairy, or if it’s just low blood sugar. I’d better get on planning for tomorrow.

Edit: After tallying it up, my calorie count for the day was only 1,015. Yeahhhh, that’s not enough. My protein was at about half of what it should have been, which is not good, either. No wonder I feel like crap.

Cleanse Me

September 16th, 2011 | Posted by Karrey in Deflabbify | Food | Revampify - (0 Comments)

So, I’m thinking of doing a cleanse. I know. I KNOW. I know what you’re going to say, just hear me out.

Basically, I need a mile-marker. I’ve stop-started this whole “change my eating habits” thing so many times, the lines between healthy eating and disordered overeating have blurred. I need some delineation. I need to get out of the “okay, starting tomorrow! okay, maybe not. starting tomorrow! oops, ruined it. starting tomorrow!” rut. I need to flip the script on this shit.

At first, I was honestly considering doing a juice fast/cleanse. I felt like, even though it isn’t the healthiest method, it would give my metabolism a goose and just get me in the mindset of making big changes. I’ve gotten suggestions for Clean Program (21 days, whoa!) and the Blueprint Cleanse, which is customizable to however many days you want to run it. Two things I noticed about these:

  1. These companies had 8923748932 different reasons why you should do their cleanses, to detox your body and get rid of impurities, but didn’t have a lot of scientific explanations for their claims, and
  2. HOLY BUCKETS, DID YOU SEE THE PRICES? Oh mah gah, prepackaged cleanses are expensive!

Then I peeked at the “Master Cleanse“, that one where you drink juice with cayenne pepper in it. No prepackaged crap, but honestly? I don’t like how they’re pandering to the “I wanna lose 20lbs in 3 days!” crowd. Also, I really just don’t like lemonade that much. Or at all. Blech.

So what’s a poor little vegetarian girl supposed to do to detox from a terrible diet? Why, GO VEGAN OF COURSE! Actually, I’m going to come at the detox from two angles: vegan and grain-free. I’m one of those terrible vegetarians who, instead of replacing the meat in their diets with wholesome vegetables and fruits, instead started loading up on carbs. I already know that I’ve got an unhealthy relationship with white flour and simple sugars, so I think we need some time apart, to think things over. Veganism will just be a little bonus.

I’ve already got pretty good practice at label-reading because of my vegetarianism, so this’ll just take it a little step further. And I couldn’t choose a better time to fill my diet with fresh veggies and fruits. I’ll do it for a week, and see where I want to go from there. I’m probably going to be pretty angry for the first few days. WHEEE!

32 Before Thirty-Two

September 15th, 2011 | Posted by Karrey in Baking | Deflabbify | Food | Lists | Music | Revampify | Shopping | Vanity - (0 Comments)

So far in my life, I’ve made two attempts at broad “life lists”: the 101 things in 1001 days list, and the 30 Before 30 list that I put here. Both had pretty sad, pathetic results. So I should obviously try again, RIGHT? Right. I’m even going to recycle some from the last list. Here we go:

  1. Become licensed as a Registered Nurse.
  2. Watch Arrested Development, starting back at the beginning, all the way through.
  3. Pay off my credit card
  4. Create monthly music mixes without missing a month.
  5. Mail goodies to 5 friends that live far away.
  6. Scan all of our photos and put them up online.
  7. Open a Roth IRA.
  8. Take a yoga class.
  9. Learn how to put makeup on my face.
  10. Run in a 5k.
  11. Participate in NO PANTS NOVEMBER.
  12. Make or create at least 50% of the gifts I give for the holidays.
  13. Get my first pedicure
  14. Go to a Nursing Conference, preferably about midwifery.
  15. Get rid of our Expedit bookshelf and build a FAUXDENZA!
  16. Complete the 100 Pushups Challenge
  17. Go to the Madison (Wisconsin) Farmer’s Market.
  18. Bake a rainbow cake.
  19. Learn a song on my ukulele
  20. Cull my collection of books to those I actually love and want to own.
  21. Make some infused booze.
  22. Watch the Godfather trilogy.
  23. Design our wedding invitations.
  24. Knit myself some slippers. I keep making them for others, and never for myself!
  25. Hang all of the art/photography I’ve been hoarding away in storage.
  26. Complete a juice or smoothie fast.
  27. Read 10 Banned Books.
  28. Make a braided rug.
  29. Ride in RAGBRAI (I’ll give myself a special allowance for this one, since it comes after my birthday)
  30. Make a batch of soap.
  31. Scooter camping at Palisades

I’m starting this now, with less than a year to go. That gives me 301 days, to be exact, which is plenty of time. I only have to accomplish 0.103 items on my list per day in order to be done in time. Totally doable.

2 Dogs Pub in Iowa City

September 15th, 2011 | Posted by Karrey in Beer | Food | Iowa City - (2 Comments)

IMAG0221Last night, we decided to try out a new beer/food joint in town before heading to the grocery store (who wants to shop on an empty stomach?), so we headed over to 2 Dogs Pub on 1st Avenue in Iowa City. They bill themselves as having a sports-pub theme, but as not being a full-blown sports bar, so my expectations weren’t super high. I was pleasantly surprised.

A few weeks ago, we decided to walk downtown from our house to have beer-dinner at a local sports bar, The Vine, since it was closest to our house and has a semi-okay beer selection. The Vine in Iowa City is a pretty good illustration of that type of place: basement atmosphere, dark wood, dark paint, lots of tvs, a couple of non-Budweiseresque beer choices on tap, and passable food. I used to love the place a lot when I still ate meat, since their wings are city-wide famous, and back when I didn’t have very good taste in beer, but my palate has since matured.

This new joint was nothing like that! Bright and airy, with a sort of divider between the back bar area and the front, which probably makes the front more family-friendly. They have a great fucking beer selection (24 taps for draft beer), with plenty of microbrews and a nice representation of Iowa-brewed beer.

We seated ourselves and were served promptly. I picked a pint of Empyrean Dark Side Vanilla Porter, a favorite of mine, while Kevin chose some Iowa beer that neither of us can recall now. We both decided on chipotle-black bean burgers with fries: I had mine “Animal Style” with Thousand Island dressing, caramelized onions, lettuce, and American cheese (trying to recreate my usual wrap from Baldy’s, RIP), and Kevin chose the “Border Crossing”, with salsa, jalapeno slices, pepperjack cheese, and garlic aioli. The burgers were delicious, perfectly cooked with really good flavor profiles. The fries were perfectly fried, not too greasy, not too salty. For dessert, we split a tiny funnel cake, which came with fudge sauce and raspberry coulis for dipping. YUM!

The place had high ceilings, so at first we were afraid that sound might echo (have you been in the new Noodles & Co. yet? Ugh, impossible to have a conversation!), but I didn’t notice a problem with noise at all, and the place was fairly busy. It might be a little ruckus-y if the joint is full, but that’s to be expected. There were several TVs scattered around, but they were at that perfect height on the wall where you don’t notice them if you’re not looking for them. They were also all blissfully silent. Classic rock played softly from speakers overhead.

Overall, we both dig the place quite a lot. It doesn’t hurt that it’s a quick bike ride from our house. For two people, where we both ordered burgers, beer, and split a dessert, the bill came to $29. Not bad at all.

Food Angst

September 9th, 2011 | Posted by Karrey in Deflabbify | Food | Revampify - (0 Comments)

I had a mini angst-fest on Twitter yesterday about my relationship with food, which I think is something I really need to work out for myself. Here are some of the things I wrote:

I should be able to drop weight simply by controlling my diet/eating habits, right? It should be easy. It seems logically easy. It never is.

I make these pie-in-the-sky plans to sit down and plan out a balanced diet, menu-plan, food pyramid, etc. It’s too complicated.

I know I need to go simpler. I feel like school is maybe draining my willpower? Like, I only have so much, and the well is dry.

Then I balk and say to myself, “I enjoy tasty food! Why do I need to deprive myself of that?!” So there’s some sulking, too.

Maybe I’m tainted by my need for instant-gratification? Scale doesn’t move the next day after “being good”, so I say fuck it.

Using school as an excuse is really convenient, but let’s face it: I haven’t been in school forever. In fact, there have been long periods of my life in between school stints where I have still been heavy. So, what’s the deal? Maybe I need to read some self-help books on overeating? I don’t want to sit through an encyclopedia of schmaltz. Do I need to try attending some Overeater’s Anonymous meetings? I don’t think I can deal with the religious aspect and giving up my will to a higher power that goes along with that.

What is it that I need?

30 Before Thirty!

March 4th, 2010 | Posted by Karrey in Baking | Beer | Cooking | Deflabbify | Food | Iowa City | Lists | Music | My house | Travel - (1 Comments)

I’ll be turning 30 years old on July 12, 2010, and I decided to partake in the project where you make a list of thirty things you want to accomplish before your 30th birthday. I don’t have long to go, but I’m hoping I can polish off everything on this list by making the items reasonable:

  1. Hang curtains (whether store-bought or handmade) in every window of the house, and get rid of every shred of miniblinds that have been haunting my windows and my dreams since we moved in.
  2. Install hardwood flooring throughout the main floor of the house (!!!).
  3. Pay off my credit card.
  4. Brew a batch of stout beer.
  5. Plan and start saving for an autumn vacation in Vancouver/Seattle.
  6. Grow delicious foods from heirloom seeds from Baker Creek, including a healing herb garden.
  7. Get a really great haircut from my bestie JoAnn at G Spot Hair Design, one that is an actual hairdo rather than something I pull back into a bun everyday.
  8. Get new glasses and contacts.
  9. Paint every room in the house something other than “Ultra White”.
  10. Scan all of our photos and organize them somewhere online.
  11. Update my Iowa City tumblr at least once a week.
  12. Continue my weight loss/fitness streak. Weight Watchers is working!
  13. Throw a May Day party.
  14. Organize and clean the basement.
  15. Try sewing another purse.
  16. Bake the perfect Blondie.
  17. Finish watching the whole Arrested Development series (we’re on an extended hiatus, mid-season 2).
  18. Create monthly music mixes without missing a month.
  19. Try making homemade ketchup.
  20. Build a pergola on the patio to continue cultivating an awesome backyard oasis.
  21. Finally part with (donate) the ugly fleece that’s clogging up my fabric stash.
  22. Go scooter camping in Palisades.
  23. Buy a bike helmet so I can safely ride all over town.
  24. Start really using the calendar/scheduling app on my iPhone to help keep my life more organized.
  25. Try raw milk.
  26. Mail goodies to my faraway friends.
  27. Build a respectable cocktail station.
  28. Start a food blog with aforementioned JoAnn.
  29. Make a batch of Navratan curry.
  30. Throw a fabulous 30th birthday party on my patio.

Holiday Baking Plans

November 24th, 2008 | Posted by Karrey in Baking | Food - (0 Comments)

Baking large loads of goodies is one of my favorite aspects of the holiday season, and despite the fact that I’ll be renovating and moving into my new house, this year will be no different! It might just mean that the food preparation will have to happen somewhere other than my new place (although I’m itching extra hard to prepare food in my awesome new gas oven). Here are some things I want to make:

(photos are not mine, unfortunately)

I discovered chocolate cloud cookies last year right before the holidays and they looked so yummy that I went out and made them right away. Totally worth it. I ended up giving some away as presents, and then made up a whole other batch to serve at my New Year’s Eve party. They were definitely a hit. Make lots. Once you’ve made them once or twice, they’re easy as pie. Bonus points for being able to use my cookie scoop!

I’m not even really a big fan of divinity, but I’m going to make it this year. It’s just a little (or a lot) too sweet for me, and I want stuff that I can snarf truckloads of, rather than things that make me swear sugar off for a year. However, this was a holiday food that my grandmother used to make, so I’ll be carrying on the tradition. I’ll post her recipe once I find it in my mom’s stockpile.

I didn’t realize until pretty recently that I really love sugar cookies. I don’t know if it was that I had been eating bad ones all my life, or if there are so many different varieties that I just hadn’t tried the right one yet, but I can say definitively that I’ve found THE ONE. These are easy to make, very mild and not too sweet, and they’re the perfect consistency (slightly crunchy) to make them firm enough to do intricate decorative icing on, but not so hard that they’ll break your teeth. Thank goodness for Real Simple.

I’m hoping to get an icing/piping set soon, and with that I’ll be able to do some fancy work on cookies. I’m looking forward to edible sparkles, nonpareils, shiny silver and gold balls, and all the rest. I have the feeling I’ll be spending too much money at the new Michael’s craft store out at the mall.

Back before I became a vegetarian, I made some very respectable efforts at making homemade marshmallows. I have faith that these efforts can be replicated in a vegan way, so I’m going to try it. I’ve heard that agar agar can be used as a 1:1 substitution for the unflavored gelatin. Let’s find out!