While Visions of Kale Danced in my Head

Back in December, I asked for advice about, among other things, a tasty way to fix kale. I didn't get much response there. I can't imagine why. But just last week I happened to be with a friend, whose food tastes are much like mine, as she was eating some lunch that she'd brought from home.

She had kale.

She offered me some.

I ate it.

Heavenly music began playing and, as I chewed in slow motion, the world became rosy and it was all I could do to keep myself from fainting.

Needless to say, I asked her for the recipe, and while I was on my way home from Sears yesterday, I stopped to pick up some kale and one ingredient that I didn't have here at home. I began preparing it without delay. Then I ate a lot.

And I had more at lunch time today along with a modified version of my favorite sandwich - which has sliced zuchinni in place of the spinach, thereby making it my favoriteEST sandwich - and some fruit.

The yum factor was high.

So, if you want to increase the yum factor in your lunch, this is how you do it:

Add about 1/4 cup (or less) of water to a large skillet. Add a bit of olive oil. Add one or two teaspoons of Tamari sauce (which is like soy sauce.) Sprinkle in Spike seasoning and ground ginger - enough of each to distribute it all around the skillet. Heat mixture until it begins to steam and sautee a bunch of washed, torn kale until it turns bright green. Add sesame seeds if desired.

Happy eating.

Can a Person Eat Too Much Asparagus?

I love asparagus. A while back I was asking for ways to prepare it, because I hadn't really eaten it all that much let alone prepared it for myself. When I wrote that post, I probably could've counted the number of times I'd eaten asparagus in my life on two hands. I only remember LIKING it once. The rest of the times it was bearable, or downright disgusting.

Then Luisa left a comment with her simple prep for asparagus.

And now? Well.

Now, I want to marry the asparagus.

Even my husband, who could hardly bring himself to even swallow the stuff in the past, eats it.

Willingly. Like, if-I-don't-put-it-on-his-plate-he-will-serve-it-to-himself kind of willingly.

We were having some the other night at dinner and he said, "My mother would fall over if she saw me eating this."

Dear man, don't think I didn't have to steady myself.

And in case you don't believe me about how good the asparagus is, Ms. Bao just asked for a taste of mine and then asked for more. Twice.

It's good. That's all I'm sayin'.

Laughing All the Way to the... Barn?

I love cheese.

I do. I love cheese. Good cheese, not the processed stuff in the wrapper. (I like that, but I don't LOVE it.)

I have made a certain sandwich several times for lunch these last few weeks. It is so very tasty. It has cheese on it. Here is how it goes.

I get a Thomas' Whole Wheat mini bagelbread and I put on about a teaspoon of light mayo. (I switched to light mayo a long time ago, because I couldn't tell the difference between it and the regular. It's not a new thing for the weight loss challenge.) I cut a nice, thick piece of tomato, sprinkle with salt and pepper, add some fresh spinach on top, and finish off with a slice of Muenster cheese.

Did I mention I love cheese? Well, I really love Muenster cheese. I have been known to make grilled cheese sandwiches with it.

Anyhoo, I found something this weekend. It was a coupon in the Sunday paper for these little soft cheese wedges from The Laughing Cow. I saw that they had a "lite" version that was only 35 calories. I decided to give it a try. Clever marketing - lure them in with the coupon and make a customer of them for life (to which I say "Uncle! UNCLE!")

You see, I tried one of them today. The garlic and herb flavor, to be exact. I spread one on some zuchinni squash.

Can I just tell you something?

It was DE. Lic. Ious. DELICIOUS!

I got to wondering how the cheese would taste on my sandwich. So, I made the sandwich sans mayo and Muenster cheese. I just spread some (not even a whole wedge) on the bagel bread in place of the mayo.

People.

Can you please just try this sandwich? Because you cannot possibly know how much I enjoyed that unless you do too.

So, for lunch today, I had:
1 whole wheat mini bagel bread - 150 cal
not quite, but we'll call it 2 cheese wedges - 70 calories
zuchinni, tomatoes, spinach - I don't know how many calories are in those, but not much.

What I am trying to say is, I'M FULL AND I DIDN'T HAVE TO EAT 700 CALORIES TO DO IT! And, oh, did I mention, IT WAS GOOD!

When I do this lunch in the future, I likely won't eat two of the cheese wedges, just one. Which is, as you know, even better for the calorie total.

(No, I am not counting calories, per se, but I am trying to pay attention to how much food I eat.)

It's a Shay-ay-ame

It is such a shame that you all won't be able to SMELL my house during the Tour of Homes. It's peach season, and today was the day that I made the first peach pie of the summer. DELIGHTFUL.









The only thing more sad for you lovely readers is that you didn't get to taste it. Oh, my, such good peach pie. (And if any of my chem buddies were reading this, they'd get my reference to the nomenclature of dicarboxylic acids. But alas...)

Recipe Search

While we were at the store this week, Mr. Bug asked if we could get asparagus. We don't normally (read, ever) eat asparagus because Paul gags on it, and it isn't, exactly, one of my favorites. But, it was on sale, and he asked for it, and it is heathful, I thought I'd be stupid not to let him try it. Who knows, maybe it will be one of his new favorites.

But, I got the asparagus home and realized that I don't have any good ideas for how to fix it. So, great internets, I turn to you. I would like to know how you fix asparagus. I'd like a recipe that keeps it fairly heathful (no deep frying, Boomama.) And it needs to be one that would generally appeal to kids (if that is possible with asparagus,) so, I'm not looking for anything with, say, anchovies in it.

I would love to hear from you all. If I like enough of the recipes, I might even have to buy more asparagus so I can try them all out.

Eating Better

Over the last two years or so, I have been trying to make some small changes in the food I prepare for my family. I don't think our eating was terrible, but it could be improved upon. So, I started instituting the following changes:

Less rice, pasta, potatoes. I can't even remember the last time I fixed potatoes! We do an occaisional lasagna. We hardly ever do pizza. If we do rice, I try to make it brown rice. When I need a "starchy" side, I like to make barley, often with some chopped up carrots in it. Very tasty. The idea here is to reduce simple carbs and replace with complex ones. (My weakness here is Lipton noodles. Usually they are too expensive, so I don't even consider it. But when there is a good sale, it's hard for me to pass them up!)

Eat more veggies that are high in nutrients and/or fiber. Corn and green beans are the big culprits here (no real vitamins or minerals, but also full if simple carbs.) We eat them sometimes b/c my husband isn't a big fan of many other veggies. But I have figured out a few ways to sneak some better stuff into our food. I chop up carrots (really small, in a food chopper) to mix into meatloaf. This week I actaully added chopped cabbage too. No one could tell the difference. When I make salad, I replace about half the lettuce with fresh spinach and red cabbage. The cabbage keeps the crunch and the spinach, which really doesn't taste like anything, has more nutrient value than lettuce. I try to sneak squash into dishes, if possible. And I make a lot of steamed carrots and broccoli.

Related to this, I'd like to eat one vegetarian meal each week. Since Paul is allergic to poultry, we don't eat that a lot either. That means a lot of beef and pork. It gets to be too much. But even in homes where chicken is a regular meal, I think this is a great idea. I have a super recipe for a lentil, barley, vegatable skillet that is really good... even my kids like it. Spaghetti squash comes to mind too.

Also, someone just told me that you can prepare cauliflower like mashed potatoes. I tried it and they are good! I know that boiling takes a lot of the "good stuff" out. Plus, I added salt and butter. BUT, if I had to make a choice between mashed cauliflower or mashed potatoes, I'd choose the cauliflower in a second. So far, Bug and Bao gobbled them up like they couldn't get enough. Boo said she didn't like them. I have yet to see what Paul says about it. (I have also heard of people preparing carrots like they do sweet potatoes, but when they told me they had to put the brown sugar and marshmallows on it, I filed the idea in my "recycle bin.")

Eat more fish. This was going well until we learned that Paul is allergic to salmon. I was doing fish, particularly salmon (high in omega-3s,) about once a week. But now that he is allergic, we haven't don't much fish at all. It's not the first kind of fish he's become allergic to, so he is becoming leary of eating any. It is something I'd like to figure my way around soon.

Cut back on processed foods. No mac and cheese or hamburger helper. Most of those kinds of things have so much fat and sodium and they just ain't any good for you! The big thing that I need to change in this respect is that I have too many recipes that call for some kind of cream soup. I need to cut back on those.

Better snacks. My kids eat plain yogurt like it is going out of style. They LIKE the flavored kind, but I don't buy it. (It isn't unusual for them to eat yogurt for breakfast and for a snack. They'd choose the flavored kind if it was here, and that is just too much sugar.) We don't drink much juice other than orange juice. We don't buy pop. I also try to keep soynuts and soy crisps on hand for them to munch on. They especially like soy crisps... kinda like rice cakes. Lot's of fruits and veggies around the house to pick from too.

Less sugar... this is where we really gotta clamp down. Paul and I are probably addicted. And both of us have parents who are diabetic. We are working on this one.

I have been drinking green tea a lot too. Lots of antioxidants, and tastier than plain water.

I really like the information available at World's Healthiest Foods (even though the foods are actually healthFUL, not healthY, but I digress.) They have a list of their top 100 WHfoods and they give all sorts of nutrition information about all the foods they tout. Great ideas and a bunch of recipes that I'd like to try.

Okay, so does anyone else have any tips for simple ways to make meals a little more healthful?

Addendum I presented the cauliflower to Paul and asked him if he'd try it. I called it a "mashed potato alternative." He ate some, then smiled, saying "did you sneak something in there?" I told him what it was and asked if he liked it. He said it was okay. So, more to the point, I asked him if he'd eat it if I made it for dinner. He said "I'd eat it." Translation: this is a RINGING endorsement of the mashed cauliflower!!!