Consciousness raised!

So I spent the weekend immersed in a little consciousness-raising movie marathon, inspired by my viewing of Food, Inc. last week.

First, the playlist:

King Corn:

I loved King Corn.  Really interesting to hear that nearly all the corn grown in Iowa is turned into either HFCS or animal feed.  This has just validated my hesitancy about corn.  The hard part is that corn is in so much…found this cute image online:

One thing is for sure: any corn products I eat will have to be non-GMO.  So, so sad to see the following snacks have to go from my pantry: Pirate Booty foods, Food Should Taste Good products…and the list will no doubt grow.

Food Matters:

Honestly, I found this one a little boring but still useful information.  Maybe I’ll give it a second viewing another time.  I could have been on overload by then.

Forks Over Knives:

I really liked this film as well.  This one was recommended by a few friends. So I just jumped in without knowing much about it.  I, again, learned a lot.  Funny enough, the themes of both this and Vegucated (see below) were the same: promoting a vegan diet.  The doc seemed to be more focused on the health benefits of a vegan diet.  Meanwhile…

Vegucated:

…Vegucated took a more sort of in-your-face style, which I appreciated. This doc reminded me of my days in college radio.  I became a vegetarian in college (and stayed one for 10 years…and all it took was one cute boy to lure me back to meat…har!).  One thing that helped was going to a Consolidated concert (anyone remember them??).  Awesome band that were radical activists/vegans.  They would attach huge television screen to the scaffolding behind them that showed footage from slaughterhouses, all while they played along.  I’m not sure how anyone could stomach meat after going to one of their shows.

Needless to say, I have a very veggie filled weekend.  And while I’m not ready to stop eating animal products, these doc certainly left me committed to being very mindful of where those product are produced and how.  I don’t envision that I’ll get to this point:

Even though Portland may, in fact, be my new home in a few months!  More details on that later.

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Food Inc.

Whew.  Long time with no posts.

But I’m back.  Just wanted to share this trailer for Food, Inc.:

It’s a documentary from about three years ago but I just watched it a few nights ago.  I’m actually glad that I made some rather dramatic changes to my diet, it made watching the film a bit more palatable.  I feel equally proud of my ability to be educated and aware of what I eat and foolish as I think avoiding all the pervasive ingredients totally would be tough because of how well hidden they are.  Pervasive ingredients meaning: wheat, corn, and soy.   When I first embarked on the elimination-challenge diet, I complained about how much I had to cook vs. using convenience foods.  Boy has that tune changed.

I was still left feeling a little sick after watching the film.  I learned a lot though.  Like did you know that e-coli has been a bacteria present for years but it was only when we introduced corn to cows that deadly, resistant forms of e-coli developed via mutation?  And apparently, the simple act of eliminating corn from a cow’s diet almost completely eradicates the e-coli (reduced b 80% in five days!!!!)?

The other thing that struck me is that my view of farmers shifted quite a bit.  I really, really feel for the ones who are inextricably tied to big food corporations.  Being essentially forced into purchasing upwards of $500,000.00 in equipment and getting $18,000.00/year!?!?  And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

This is a “must watch” if you haven’t already!

Trust your instincts…

Man, I was starving after my second class this morning.  I ran us through Salutation G, this morning.  I love that one, but it mixed with other flows left me so hungry afterwards.

And I had the most incredible craving for pancakes.  Well, I think the cravings were induced by a story I heard on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday this morning about a Russian Pancake Festival taking place this weekend.  It’s so funny that all the brain needs is a little hint to bring about a full-scale craving.  So, I set about looking for a (hopefully) yummy grain-free pancake recipe.

I decided to make coconut flour pancakes.  The recipe I picked looked and sounded good.  Heck, even the pancakes looked good, see…

Buuuuuuut, the recipe called for way too much salt.  Hence the title of this post…every fiber in me said, “This is tooooooo much salt” but I wanted to respect the recipe as is.  Crap.  They are too salty for pancakes.  They’re not salt bricks but the salt is noticeable.  Also, the texture was, hmmmm, how to explain?  Not dry, they are moist…but a bit crumbly.  I’m used to the doughy, slightly stick texture that I suppose is the domain of wheat flour.  I’m not going to give up though.  I gotta find a good recipe!  Anybody got a good grain-free pancake recipe?

(On the side, egg white and turkey sausage.  Before I went wheat-free, I bought a box of Special K Flatbread Breakfast Sandwiches.  Not wanting them to go to waste, I just have the sandwich sans the flatbread.)

Long time, no see…

Boy, it’s been a little while since my last post.

Well, despite not posting, I HAVE been taking pics!

This day is one to mark on the calendars.  I have all day off!  This is a big deal because I have worked almost every Saturday morning for the past year:

10:30 am/Private lesson, with two therapist colleagues

12:00pm/Client at my office

It tends to break up my day, especially if I decide to run errands afterwards.  This actually wouldn’t be that bad if I didn’t also work on Sunday mornings.  Each Sunday morning, with few exceptions, for the past seven and a half years, I have taught yoga at 8am.  A couple of years ago, I added another class at 10am at a different, sister location, on my way home.

This sort of schedule makes lazy weekend mornings in bed, with some cuddly lover impossible.  No wonder I’m single!

Breakfast and juicing this morning, as I contemplate what to do with this day…

Steel cut oats and quinoa, with a splash of almond milk, maple syrup, a mixture of toasted nuts (pecans, almonds, hazelnuts) and a sprinkling of hemp seeds!

I, again, juiced my veg separately and then cubed them to add to my morning juices:

My freezer is taking on a whole new look, and I like it:

Cooking the blogs

In an effort to find good recipes that fit within this more restricted food plan I’m following, I’ve taken to my fellow bloggers for inspiration and frankly, help.  Enter this fabulous soup; the recipe, from a fabulous blog aptly titled, Organizing with a side of Fabulous!  Check it out!!

Juice crazy!

I was recently perusing the 101 Cookbooks website, an awesome website by Heidi Swanson. It’s got enticing photos and texts and I’ve had great success with all the recipes I’ve tried from there; which I think says something great about it.

This post about juicing, in particular, inspired me.

So, yesterday I set about juicing some of my go-to ingredients to use in my morning juice.

First, photos of the fruits of my labor (har!):

Any idea what is in the last jar? And, nope, it’s not lemon…

It’s:

With the cucumber and carrot, I poured them into ice cube trays:

Then I popped them out and added them to a tightly sealed container in the freezer.

This morning I tested out the carrot. I juiced a couple of small apples and a small lemon and added three big cubes of carrot juice. Oh, I also added about a half teaspoon of ginger “ice: shavings and added them. It added a great kick! The icy bits melted nicely in my vacuum sealed cup and left the juice super cold for a while.

Even though I still juiced a little this morning, it still saved me time. I think I’ll have to do some more juicing this coming weekend. Hmm, what to juice next?

Paleo Bread!

OMG.  I made my first Paleo bread today!

It’s so freakin’ good!  And it didn’t even turn out exactly as it should.  Thank goodness there are suggestions on Elena’s site that I ca try next time.

Regardless, this is one yummy bread.  Gluten-free, paleo-friendly, and really nutritionally packed!  You gotta try this recipe:

I cheated a bit.  It’s the last day of the elimination-challenge.  But I had a smear of butter on this bread, along with some blueberry preserves!

I can see the finish line…

Whew.  It’s been a while since I last posted.  As I last noted, wheat day (and the following days) was horrible.  That was then followed by nightshade day.  This, and the days that followed it were, sadly, no kinder to me.  I was moving and thinking through mud and still in a lot of physical pain.  I’ve never had sciatica hang on for this long.  But I do believe that the wheat and nightshades are the main culprits.

I had a lot of fun, initially, on nightshade day.  Even though as the day went on I felt more pain, I made this amazing dinner:

A bacon-covered Yellow Bell Pepper (nightshade) stuffed with crushed tomatoes (nightshade), olives, basil, garlic, and hot peppers (nightshades)!  I paid for it the next few days.  Not as badly as with wheat though.  So I think that I might allow myself nightshades occasionally and be careful not to mix them or eat a lot in one day.

Yesterday was corm day.  The last of the food challenges!  And I’m happy to report that it went well.  I was worried! Funny enough, all I really had yesterday was corn.

Corn Bran cereal for breakfast, Food Should Taste Good Tortilla chips and Pop’d Kerns (a yummy popped corn snack) for snacks during the day.  And frozen corn for dinner.  As an aside, I was also supposed to have leftover roasted pork…oh, it smelled so good.  Well, I dropped it on the floor before I could even get a bite.  😦

The most amazing part was getting to eat this gluten-free cupcake, with cornstarch and xanthan gum (corn-based)!  It was really good:

Here’s a pic of the Pop’d Kerns:

The awful wheatie truth

After my last two days, I think it’s safe to safe to say that my relationship with wheat has come to an end.  It’s okay though.  I’m looking at it as an amicable break up.  The way that wheat has treated me in the last two days is something that we can’t come back from.  But we both know the appeal will remain.  So we also accept that if, in the future, we want to say, just have coffee together, that it’ll be okay.  It can just never go back to what it used to be.

All drama aside, wheat day was not the greatest.  Well, I felt fine during the day.  My back pain in slowly easing up so I’m a little more quick on the draw.  I ate lots of whole wheat throughout the day.  By that evening, I was starting to feel tired.  I just assumed that it was because I had a day of back-to-back sessions.  This was the same night that I had the text fight with MJ.  I didn’t realize that it could be because of the wheat that I felt so slow and crabby and dense.  Well that just continued and worsened by Friday night.  I had plans for dinner with friends and as I was getting ready to go I had the worst intestinal cramps.  I was well enough to go to dinner which was as fun as it could be considering my body hurt and I was still crabby.  It also didn’t help that this diet makes it difficult to eat out or buy pre-packaged foods.  Yes, this is in actuality a good thing…just not convenient!

Here’s some pics from dinner:

Dinner and Top Chef

So tomorrow is Wheat Day (see Elimination-Challenge diet).  I wish I could punctuate that with an exclamation point, but wheat…just sounds so boring.  And besides, I had another frustrating trip through the grocery store trying to find products that were 100% whole wheat but that didn’t have any of the other eliminated ingredients.  Fat chance.  I wanted to at least vary it a bit instead of eating cereal all day.  Har.  I’ll have to go to the co-op tomorrow.

For tonight’s dinner, I just couldn’t resist making this salad.  I know mangoes are totally not in season now but this salad is a shot of brightness on a cold winter day.  Makes me think of the tropics, especially whist wrapped in a heated blanket.

I turned a Giada De Laurentiis recipe into this salad.  She served it in little wonton cups.  I make my own dressing with avocado oil, EVOO, a few drops of toasted sesame oil, white balsamic vinegar and a bit of rice vinegar.  The salad itself is arugula, avocado, mango, and tilapia.  I topped it with toasted almonds and a few hemp seeds.

Off to watch Top Chef!