Home Grown

What? What is this? Two posts in the same day? I must be crazy. Not having a 6+ month gap between posts is just plain crazy. Ah, well. Let's not get used to it. So, anyway, I'm blogging (again!) about a quick trip to Walmart yesterday. I'm a big fan of budget shopping. I love the thrill of finding a great bargain. And Walmart is a warehouse full of them, so it's rare that I leave that beautiful place empty-handed. Of course, yesterday was no exception. I hit up the Garden Center to grab some gardening gloves and a watering can (did I tell you? I'm tackling a veggie garden this year. Wish me luck!) and wandered around checking out the herbage/veg options. I ended up picking up a great looking rosemary plant, some spinach, bibb lettuce and another fun leafy green I've never heard of. This, I have decided, will be the start of my garden. You see, last year I had herbs and I neglected to bring them inside for the winter, so ... now I don't have anymore. BUT! I loved having an herb garden! I adored being able to step outside of my kitchen and snip a bit of parsley here, and chives there. It was glorious. So I thought I'd try again, but add to it. By growing my own veggies! A small detail: I live in a town house with a lawn like a postage stamp. My back yard is on a hill and the flat part of our property is covered with a patio. Plus I have a huge curious dog. So an actual plot in the ground wasn't gonna fly. I'm going with the container garden approach, which will find it's happy home on my deck, which, conveniently, lies right off of my kitchen. It's warm and sunny and I can be picking and snipping just steps from my stove. The whole container thing was a bit off-putting at the start. But I did a little research and discovered that lots of veggies will grow really well in containers and most varieties will even dwarf themselves to fit their space. Which is lovely. My plan is to have a container of herbs, a container of lettuces and greens, and a container of other stuff - beans, cucumbers, peppers and the like. I'm debating one of those upside down tomato things too - that I can just hang off the side of the deck and pick from at my leisure. So we'll see. But at the moment, there are leafy green things in my possession that I cannot wait to tend to ... and then EAT! I love this time of year!

That whole meatless thing ...

Well, this is where Meatless Monday stands at present: It's become seafood Monday temporarily. My husband works alternating shifts - some weeks he's home for dinner, some weeks he isn't. The past two (and the next two, at least) he's been home for dinner on Monday. So, in an effort to feed his inner carnivore, but maintain my plan to go meatless at least once a week, I've adopted seafood as my Monday go-to. To make up for this, I am eating completely meatless at least two other days a week. Which, so far, is easy and not too fussy. I worried about that. As much as I love to cook, and try new things too, I seem to get into these culinary ruts on occasion. This being one of those occasions, I was a little worried about how difficult it would be to remove animal proteins from my diet and still feel full and satisfied - without having to do anything too weird or uncomfortable here at the beginning. But it's been breezy. Mostly I'm just loading up on fruits and veggies, low-cal snacks and lots of water during the day. Dinner I try to be more creative, but instead of freaking out over weird ingredients I'm pretty much just doing things like sauteeing veggies and adding them to a bowl of brown rice and black beans, mix in a little salsa and the slightest dab of fat-free sour cream or plain greek yogurt. *side note* I'm not approaching this from a vegan point of view. I'm attempting meatlessness, but I'm still very much eating dairy (minimally), eggs, and using chicken broths, etc. Since I'm not ready to embrace a completely vegetarian lifestyle. Possibly ever. But we'll see. Oh, and in an effort to up the ante in my kitchen I've been looking for fun recipes that aren't time consuming but are fresh and tasty despite the lack of meat. The site StumbleUpon is amazing. (http://www.stumbleupon.com/) Pretty much you just tell them your interests (mine: food/cooking) and they organize all these sites for you. Then you "stumble" your way from one to the next. You can mark it as being a favorite, which will be saved to your profile, or give it a thumbs down if you really can't dig it. I'm loving it - and I've already found some fabulous recipes I'm going to try. Okay, so maybe meatless isn't so bad after all ... Happy Eating!

Meatless Friday? And that vinegarette I was telling you about ...

It's clear to me that the whole meatless sensation is actually do-able. Yes, I know that today (Friday) is just 4 days after Monday (my meatless day) and so I still have 3 more days before I have to go meatless again, in keeping with that Meatless Monday thing. But it'll be just me for dinner tonight and both breakfast (Quaker Oatmeal Squares - how good are they??) and lunch (I grazed on low-cal snacks most of the afternoon, I'm sorry to say) were both meatless so I decided that tonight I'll give that vegetarian thing another go.

The reality, of course, is that I'm going to be having pasta.

I've been thinking about it for hours.

My thoughts are residing somewhere along the lines of a tomato cream sauce and penne or possibly angel hair if I just can't wait any longer. (This day feels like it's lasting forever, by the way.)

So, really, it's been easy to go meatless today. But still, score one for me! Two attempts in the SAME week at leaving the carnivore behind. Albeit temporarily.

So I'm pretty psyched about dinnertime and I really want Monday's spinach salad again, so here's the recipe for that warm vinegarette. As usual, I didn't measure anything. Just go by taste.

Olive oil and red wine (or apple cider) vinegar go in a saucepan. Add some dijon mustard. Salt. Pepper. I tossed in a pinch of brown sugar. Whisk it up. Put the pan over high heat. You want it to boil but once it does, turn the heat down fairly low. That vinegar is going to start giving off a stench that you don't want your face near, so stand back. After a minute or two of it sort of simmering, take it off the heat and whisk it well. It should be thick and glossy. Pour over spinach leaves, red onion slices, big chunks of hard boiled egg whites and top it with toasted chopped almonds and sesame seeds.

So good.

Meatless Mondays

I suppose I've been living under a rock because I'm just now hearing about Meatless Mondays. If you're not familiar with it, Meatless Mondays is a campaign to introduce one vegetarian day to your diet a week - every week - for several reasons. One is financial - families can save around $1000 a year just by going meatless one day a week. Another is healthful - you can lose weight and gain energy by replacing meat with fiberful fruits and veggies, plus whole grains, nuts, seeds and good-for-you oils. There's the environmental reason too - supporting your local farmers or co-ops will better your hometown community and lessen the footprint we each leave on the earth.

All of that is to say, I'm willing to try it. I am an omnivore (like most humans). I enjoy a nice meaty steak just as much as that giant salad, but I fear I cannot live on veggies alone. I do think, however, that I can leave meat off the menu one day a week and be the better for it. My husband, though, may not see the benefits behind it. But that's another story.

While researching Meatless Mondays, I came across lots of recipes (on the Meatless Mondays website, of course, as well as others) that I'd really like to try. Nothing too outlandish; baby steps are best I think. This past Monday I went for only seafood proteins (since my husband is still a 7-days-a-week meateater) so it wasn't completely meatless, but I tried. Breakfast was easy. I just ate a granola bar and some fruit before work. I had tuna salad on a slice of wheat bread, loaded with veggies, for lunch and dinner was a great spinach salad (with veggies, sliced egg, toasted almonds and sesame seeds and this fantastic warm vinegarette - which I'll post about later) topped with shrimp that I just tossed in some cornstarch and crisped up in a nonstick pan with about a tablespoon of olive oil. All in all, really filling, super satisfying and honestly delicious. All those veggies kept me full longer and I managed to curb my 9 PM snack cravings :o).

So, while Monday #1 was just shy of completely meatless, I think it went well and I'm willing to give it a go next week too. Perhaps this time I'll leave the meat off altogether and the husband won't even notice.

Try going meatless one day a week and see how creative you can get! Happy Eating!